The Charge

Opening Statement

Facts of the Case

Walker plays Joey Gazzelle, a low-level thug in the Perello crime family. His
job his simple: he disposes of all the guns used by the Perello boys to commit
various acts of homicidal malfeasance. When he's not busting balls with the goon
squad, he's home making out with his spitfire wife Teresa (Vera Farmiga) and
struggling to keep his son Nicky from flunking out of school. His life is a
constant blur of minor illegalities, gunfire, and family drama.

On this night, though, all that insanity gets pushed to 11. After a thwarted
hold-up leaves some dirty cops dead, Joey is instructed to jettison the hot
weapon. He stows it in his basement, and, unknown to him, the young neighbor boy
Oleg (Cameron Bright, Birth) swipes it to put a
couple into his abusive stepfather. Hearing the gunshots, Joey scrambles next
door, only to find the father bleeding and the boy gone—along with his
gun.

Joey has one night to track down the gun before the police get a hold of it,
match up the slug, and seal his death sentence. But this will be no simple
scavenger hunt. Joey will have to contend with a crooked detective (Chazz
Palminteri), the Russian mob, even his own Mafia buddies. Meanwhile, Oleg has
his own house of horrors to navigate, fraught with homicidal pedophiles,
drugged-out homeless men, and wannabe pimps. Oh, and the kitchen sink, too.

The Evidence

Holy friggin' crap is this movie a shotgun blast of sensory overload between
the eyes. Director Wayne Kramer (The
Cooler) has delivered a non-stop action workhorse, loaded sideways with
brutal violence, nightmarish caricatures, full frontal female nudity, gun-toting
kids, washing machine cunnilingus, and more F-bombs than Training Day and my drunk neighbor
from Hampton Beach combined.

Running Scared is a
hyperkinetic fairy tale, juiced on PCP, and sporting the attention span of a
hypoglycemic 9-year-old in a Krispy Kreme. From the get-go, with an
overly-stylized shootout, the film detonates, pausing the action only for
marginal character development. But once Oleg gets the gun, though, it's on, and
the flick barrels forward to its gratuitously violent conclusion. In fact, the
only break in the mayhem is the extended sequence where the focus shifts to
Teresa and her entanglement with a pedophilic married couple. More on that in a
bit.

The film is really a progression of encounters, each one growing more
surreal and overblown that the one that preceded it. The only anchors: our main
characters, and the hunt for the stolen gun. It's the gun that acts as the
catalyst, the carrot on the stick that keeps the main players rocketing forward
and headlong into weirdness.

A sampling: Oleg gets it the worse, running into eerie, shrouded street
people, a violent pimp who's not nearly as bad-ass as he thinks he is, and, the
big one, that evil child-murdering couple. All of these nasties are grotesque
caricatures, their mannerisms and affectations cranked up to the ionosphere
("Say hello to my little friend!" the pimp shouts with this gun
drawn), reflecting the bombastic Grimm fairy tale feel Kramer is after. As Oleg
navigates this hellish realm, Kramer sets it up so we, as the audience,
continually wonder what he can possibly do to top what he have just seen. And he
does, consistently. I mean, seriously, wait until you get to the pedophile
scene, an almost cartoonish sequence that still remains hugely disturbing. With
this long storyline, Kramer has left much of the evil to our imagination and
pays it off with Teresa riding to the rescue. But the tension is thick, the
heavies creepy, and, wait, was that a demon in the window?

Paul Walker mans the more action-oriented aspect of the film, from flaming
interrogations to the ice rink denouement where he takes some slapshots to the
face. All bets are off in the finale, the mayhem bathed in black light and the
violence amazingly over-the-top; here Kramer has achieved a true comic-book
feel. I know Walker is a favorite whipping boy of most cinephiles, but I've
always liked the guy. I think he manages to pull off his dude/frat boy shtick in
a way that doesn't make his seem self-absorbed and too cool for the audience.
He's certainly the most active and energized in this movie than in any other
I've seen him in, and, physically, he's more than able to carry the action
scenes.

How will you respond to this movie? Who knows? Do you like being
blitzkrieged in your action films? How about profanity and brutal violence? Is
that something that gets your action gland secreting? Do you mind if
characterization takes a backseat to freight train pacing? If you answer the
affirmative to any of these questions, I think you'll have a good time with this
film. Though it's not the meditation on evil that Kramer talks about in his
commentary track (sorry, there's no room for pop-theodicy when there're pimps
that need stabbing), Running Scared is a deliriously off-beat, psycho
action flick that, if nothing else, entertains mightily.

The film is presented in a wiggy 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The
picture looks great, though be prepared for some intense color levels (a
stylistic choice by Kramer). A DTS ES 6.1 track instantly bumps up the sound
score, mainly because I invested money into a 6.1 amp and not nearly enough
flicks use the mix. DTS 6.1 or no, we're talking an active, in-your-face
soundscape. Extras, though limited, are decent. I loved Kramer's commentary as
he just goes straight through talking about every angle of his film; it's a very
articulate, interesting track. The behind-the-scenes is more-or-less promo-ish,
but you get interviews with the major players. Some storyboards and a cool comic
book finish off the extras.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

A major twist transpires at the end. It's a jarring turn of events and, in my
opinion, satisfactory, but may prove logically problematic for a lot of you.
Then again, "logical" is about the 234,567,235th word I'd use as a
descriptor for Running Scared,
just above "feel-good" and "boring."

Closing Statement

I haven't seen anything like Running Scared. It's not for the
faint of heart (and not for kids), but those you can survive the full
frontal-lobe assault should soundly enjoy themselves. New Line, as usual,
delivers a dope DVD.